The chairman of Barclays' global banking unit is leaving to join UBS, becoming the second high-profile resignation from the group's investment bank this week.

Ros Stephenson has been named global chair of UBS's corporate client solutions business and head of the unit, which includes advisory and capital markets activities, in the Americas, according to a statement.

Her departure comes days after Barclays' US chief Skip McGee resigned.. The WSJ reported also reported today that the bank's Asia CEO Robert Morrice will retire later this year.

Barclays' chief executive Antony Jenkins and its chairman David Walker have both this year spoken of the necessity to pay competitively to retain staff, particularly in the US, but the bank has come in for intense scrutiny over its decision to increase its 2013 remuneration pool by 10% to £2.4 billion. The WSJ reported this week that McGee's departure had been related to internal tensions over pay and other issues.

Investors will find out more about the bank's plans for its investment banking business at a strategy day next week. It emerged this week that Barclays was planning to create a bad bank to house assets it plans to wind down or sell. Eric Bommensath, the co-head of Barclays' investment bank, is expected to be named as head of the bad bank.

Stephenson, who founded Lehman Brothers’ financial sponsors group, worked as co-head of corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions at Barclays from 2008 - the year the UK bank acquired Lehman's US business - to 2013. She was named chairman of banking globally in October 2013.

At UBS, Stephenson will oversee the bank's client coverage, advisory work, financing origination and financing solutions in the US, according to a statement. She will also help push its investment banking business globally. The hire underscores Zurich-based UBS’s efforts to bolster its senior leadership in the US.

Stephenson will report to Andrea Orcel, chief of UBS’s investment bank and will be based in New York. She will also become a member of the bank’s investment bank executive committee and Americas executive committee in September.

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Steve Cummings, who was previously head of CCS in the Americas, will become chairman of the business in the region.

"Ros is an extremely accomplished, market-leading professional with extensive client and transaction experience," Orcel said in a statement. "Her insights and expertise will be invaluable to us as we continue to grow the CCS business, particularly in the Americas.”

Barclays did not respond to calls for comment in time for publication.

• Separately, Simon Samuels, Barclays' top-ranked banks analyst in Europe, is to retire, according to people familiar with the matter. Samuels, who joined Barclays from Citigroup in 2009, has been ranked as the number one banks analyst in Europe in each of the last three years in the Thomson Reuters Extel rankings. He will be replaced by Jeremy Sigee.